Let's Play Andrew Luck Whack-a-Mole

There are two ways for a quarterback to get knocked down: sacks, and QB hits after a pass is thrown. These are designated in the play-by-play in [brackets].

Nobody in the NFL gets knocked to the ground after a pass quite like Andrew Luck. Luck has 78 QB hits through 15 weeks, including plays cancelled by penalty. That's 25 more than any other quarterback in the league, a huge margin. This isn't a one-year thing, either. In his rookie year, Luck had 83 QB hits, which also led the league and was 22 more than any other quarterback. (Matt Ryan, incidentally, is second this year and was also second a year ago.)

However, Luck isn't the most frequently knocked down quarterback. First of all, he doesn't take as many sacks as some other quarterbacks; 31 sacks puts him in the middle of the pack. He also throws a lot of passes, so of course he's going to get knocked down a bit more.

If we look at knockdowns per pass, the leader is Geno Smith of the Jets, who has 47 hits and 44 sacks.

Two things to note about the following table:

1) As noted in the post about defenders and QB hits, official scorers are very inconsistent from stadium to stadium marking QB hits. Until we can clean that data up with game charting, some quarterbacks are artificially low because their home scorers almost never mark a QB hit, and others are probably artificially high.

2) I didn't have the time to go and do a proper rate stat that included all pass plays including those cancelled by penalty, so the "rate" listed here isn't actually the rate of knockdowns to pass plays. Nonetheless, it's close enough to be useful information.

QB Hits and Sacks, Weeks 1-15 2013

Player

Team

Hits

Sacks

Passes

"Rate"

7-G.Smith

NYJ

47

44

422

21.6%

7-C.Keenum

HOU

39

19

269

21.6%

3-B.Weeden*

CLE

36

27

293

21.5%

12-A.Luck

IND

78

31

530

20.6%

3-R.Wilson

SEA

43

37

394

20.3%

3-E.Manuel

BUF

36

28

335

19.1%

10-R.Griffin

WAS

45

39

495

17.0%

7-C.Ponder

MIN

17

28

267

16.9%

3-C.Palmer*

ARI

51

39

537

16.8%

6-J.Cutler

CHI

38

13

308

16.6%

8-M.Schaub

HOU

31

18

304

16.1%

7-C.Henne

JAC

38

33

451

15.7%

Player

Team

Hits

Sacks

Passes

"Rate"

17-R.Tannehill

MIA

36

53

570

15.6%

2-T.Pryor**

OAK

11

29

262

15.3%

9-N.Foles**

PHI

21

22

289

14.9%

10-K.Clemens

STL

12

19

209

14.8%

2-M.Ryan

ATL

53

35

597

14.7%

17-J.Campbell*

CLE

24

12

245

14.7%

8-M.Glennon

TB

24

32

382

14.7%

5-J.Flacco

BAL

38

45

567

14.6%

4-R.Fitzpatrick

TEN

27

19

315

14.6%

10-E.Manning

NYG

39

36

521

14.4%

12-J.McCown

CHI

20

12

232

13.8%

12-T.Brady

NE

45

39

611

13.7%

Player

Team

Hits

Sacks

Passes

"Rate"

8-S.Bradford

STL

23

15

277

13.7%

7-C.Kaepernick

SF

19

34

396

13.4%

12-A.Rodgers

GB

17

18

268

13.1%

11-A.Smith

KC

31

34

513

12.7%

9-D.Brees

NO

46

30

604

12.6%

1-C.Newton**

CAR

17

40

460

12.4%

7-B.Roethlisberger**

PIT

22

40

560

11.1%

9-M.Stafford

DET

43

16

576

10.2%

17-P.Rivers

SD

24

26

508

9.8%

9-T.Romo

DAL

20

33

543

9.8%

14-A.Dalton

CIN

20

28

539

8.9%

16-M.Cassel

MIN

8

9

204

8.3%

18-P.Manning

DEN

27

16

598

7.2%

* QB hits total may be artificially high due to overzealous home scorers. ** QB hits total may be artificially low due to inconsistent home scorers.

Note: This is not the exact rate of knockdowns to pass plays because QB Hits and Sacks totals include plays cancelled by penalty, but Passes total does not.

Posted by: Aaron Schatz on 20 Dec 2013

34 comments, Last at
21 Dec 2013, 1:24pm by
Hurt Bones

Comments

Thanks Aaron. Some really interesting data here, but I'm not sure how to interpret it. One random thing I noticed, Cam Newton is sacked about twice as often as Jay Culter but takes a hit at about 1/3 as often.

I wonder if the difference between sack and hit rates would tell us anything.

I'd imagine with Newton a lot of those sacks are actually carries for negative yards and scrambles. Stands to reason an athletic QB would take off as the pocket collapses and look to make a play with his legs rather than stand in, throw a pass and take a hit. Would explain the disparity.

So I decided to put this data into a spreadsheet and have a quick fiddle. The first thing I wanted to look at was ratio hits to sacks. The players at either end seem to (unsurprisingly) fit in with their anecdotal "style". The bottom 5 guys in hit to sack ration (so the guys who take most sacks as percentage of total hits) are:

Pryor, Newton, Big Ben, Kaepernick and Romo.

All of those guys are seen as the sort of guys who are thought to likely run around and try to make things happen when under pressure.

Top top 5 guys are Cutler, Stafford, Luck, Keenum and Campbell. If you take out the two part time starters (Keenum and Campbell) you get Manning and Brees as the next two. Those all feel like guys who are known to sit in the pocket and trust their arm.

Basically, the guys who you think run around a lot to avoid sacks get sacked more regularly than they get hit, the guys who don't avoid the rush but try to get the ball out instead get hit more than they get sacked. That feels like one of those things that confirms exactly what you expect, but is sort of interesting simply because of that.

The overall hit-to-sack ratio for the league is 1.11. That's a little surprising - the numbers of hits that are sacks and hits that aren't sacks are closer than I'd have expected.

The average hit rate is 7.5%. The average sack rate is 6.7%. One interesting here: Matt Stafford's sack rate is 2.8%, second lowest in the league. But his hit rate is 7.5%, exactly league average. So I guess you could argue that this shows that Detroit's low sack rate is mainly a function of Stafford being excellent at getting rid of the ball at the last moment, rather than the line holding people off him.

"Matt Stafford's sack rate is 2.8%, second lowest in the league. But his hit rate is 7.5%, exactly league average."

But it's not hit rate that you should be looking at; it's hit + sack rate, which is what's listed, and in that Stafford's line looks very good. Given that fact, you can flip around your reasoning and say that Detroit's low sack rate is mainly a function of Stafford not letting routes develop downfield and throwing passes too quickly and with poor form when he feels the slightest pressure, as in his last interception on Monday.

The line has been surpisingly good this year. Stafford has always had a quick release, and gets rid of the ball quickly, which is usually good. But there have been times where it would have been better for him to take a sack rather than try to force a play that wasn't there, by throwing while falling backwards or some other nonsense. Being tied with Manning for fewest sacks is somewhat deceiving.

My point was that if you just looked at Stafford's sack rate you'd say "wow, he and the line are doing a fantastic job at avoiding pressure on him", but then the additional data suggests that ain't quite the case.

To your point, I dunno, because "slightest pressure" wouldn't likely lead to a hit (or if it did, it'd then lead to a roughing the passer penalty).

I guess the thing to sort of close the loop here might be seeing how players' DVOA when being hit is compared to DVOA when not hit? I recall from the last book that every QB's DVOA was significantly lower when pressured, but it would be interesting to see whether there are certain passers who are making the decisions to let the ball go when hit but still being (relatively) effective?

In reality, I suspect the sample size is too small. I think this stat might be similar to one of the interpretations of stuff like stop rate, in that it can be seen as an indication of how a player plays, rather than his actual effectiveness in that style?

Well, if you want a bigger sample size, look at the last three years. Detroit fans have said that the OL was at its best in 2011, but Stafford was sacked significantly more in 2011 compared to 2012. However, he did the best in the year he was sacked the most, which suggests that when there was little pressure on him, he could afford to survey the field and pass with good form, whereas he tends to go to pieces in his mechanics when he feels pressure and rushes throws to avoid sacks.

This website usually charts DVOA when pressured and not pressured. Staffords DVOA when pressured in 2011 and 2012 was among the league leaders (like +30 DVOA points higher than league average). However his DVOA when not pressured is closer to league average. His wierd mechanics sometimes allows him to make impossible throws when a guys in his face. However, sometimes the wierd mechanics rear their ugly head when he has a clean pocket, making his unpressured performance not reach its full potential.

Seems like it on the surface, but remember everyone's DVOA looks terrible if you only look at the plays when under pressure (Pretty much everyone gets negative numbers). Guys like Manning, Brady, and strangely, Cutler and Stafford are less negative than everyone else. The difference is when Manning and Brady are unpressured, their DVOA is astronomically high, while Stafford's is only "sorta" high. This suggests he doesn't get bothered that much by pass pressure, but when he's not pressured, he doesn't take advantage of it like he should.

The top 7 guys are in their first two years in the league. Perhaps inexperience in reading defenses leads to sacks. Of course, I doubt Wilson really has a problem reading defenses; his line has been injured all year.

From the fiddling with numbers I did (above), Luck's hit rate is 14.7% (highest in the league), but his sack rate is 5.8% (below the average of 6.7%). That doesn't feel like a great disparity (from the line's perspective).

I haven't counted these via game tape or anything, but I'd guess there are 9 or 10 times this season when Luck has managed to get out of what looked to be a sure sack, through no help of his o-line. Adding those in would certainly raise that sack rate to well above average, and, in my mind, validate the argument that the O-Line is terrible.

Think about what a knockdown rate of, say, 20% means. It means one pas play in five one or more 250lb + men running full tilt are going to knock you on your rear. How many passes per game does a QB attempt, on average? Ouch!

Of course, other positions (like RB) have a nearly 100% knockdown rate. No wonder there are concussion issues!

I think it would be interesting to tie it in with pressures as well, to see how different QBs handle pressure - who gets rid of the ball before a pressure turns into a hit or sack, who takes the hit, who takes the sack?

Along with the hit & sack rates, it would be good to see the numbers of hurries. Even more telling might be incompletions and interceptions on hurries and hits. For example, in the Stafford case, if he really is just hurrying, but making poor throws and choices, that might show up in the number of incompletions+interceptions/hurries+hits. Of course, the more you dice the statistics, the more likely you are going to end up with too small of samples.